"Even if there were thousands of Rachel Dolezals in the country, would their claims of blackness do anything to open up the definition of whiteness to those with darker skin, coarser hair, or racialized features?"

"The Clinton campaign carried this brand of liberalism faithfully forward. It represented the apotheosis of a Democratic Party leadership that primarily envisions the working class as a downtrodden group in need of help, rather than a sleeping giant in need of organization. A leadership that views politics as a room where clever experts hash out benevolent policies for the neediest, rather than a field of mass struggle in which everybody’s basic welfare is at stake. A leadership that may be genuinely tolerant, inclusive, and compassionate, but whose own class blinders make it almost impossible for them to think about progressive politics in terms of collective self-interest."

"Since 1991, Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC has fought to create a seat at the table for Asian Americans in the national conversations that determine the policies that shape our lives. We educate lawmakers, the public, and the media about our diverse community and its needs. We advocate on behalf of our most vulnerable communities, as well as other minority communities whose liberation is essential to creating a more just society for all. We litigate in order to defend and promote the voices of Asian Americans and underserved communities on significant civil rights issues."

"But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us.
We’re the effigies that haunt America’s nights harder
the longer they spend burning us,
we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading,
by refusing to die: what are we but a fire?"

"this pre-nationalism world-view is, indirectly, part of what draws racists to the medieval period. For their world-view to make sense, there must be some mystical past in which the races were separate, because if there have always been just random groups of people mingling genetics, languages, and cultures, then the whole idea of distinct races is holed below the waterline."

"One didn’t need to worship him, or desire to emulate him, to know this and respect him for it. And yet, for me, there had always been something slightly off-putting about him — the strangely accented, ponderous way he spoke in the interviews I watched; the lofty, “theatrical” way in which he appeared in “Good Citizens,” an essay by Joan Didion, as the bored, above-it-all figure that white people revered because he could stay collected. What I resented about Baldwin wasn’t even his fault."

"I looked around the theater and realized there was not another black face besides my one fellow actor. There was no one, in any position of power or influence, who would immediately understand what kind of position I had been put in by this actor ad-libbing hate speech at me onstage."

"'I gave the world a word,' Newman said. 'I can’t explain the feeling. At the moment I haven’t gotten any endorsements or received any payment. I feel that I should be compensated. But I also feel that good things happen to those who wait.'"

"Whereas Meechie’s dance videos are considered a threat to record companies’ bottom line, his cultural production—and Kayla Newman’s 'on fleek,' too—is treated as ripe for the taking by those same companies."

>> On the U.S.S. Enterprise, the presence of Uhura on the Bridge crew connected with the young Goldberg, and her lifelong love of Star Trek had begun. "Well, when I was nine years old Star Trek came on," Goldberg says. "I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, 'Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there's a black lady on television and she ain't no maid!' I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be."

"A man was born under magical circumstances, lived among the poor and sick, and performed miracles. He was sentenced to a brutal and unjust death, which he accepted, because it was for the good of his neighbors — even those that hated him. He was, literally, perfect.

"Maybe that’s why the recent revelation that Jesus may have had a wife is so controversial. People are angry about this, but they shouldn’t be. After all, what’s the matter with having a wife? If you believe, it doesn’t change anything, at all. He still performed miracles. He still died. He still came back. He’s still God’s son. You can still pray to him.

"But maybe the issue is that as a (formerly) Puritan society, we need our saviors to be spotless, to be clean. Perhaps that’s what all the fuss is about."

"Miley’s urban affectations fueled the frenzy around her. “Was her ratchet styling racist?” the media asked, as a barrage of incendiary tweets were fired in reply. Our thought at BULLETT: few questions that can be answered by an 8-ball are worth asking, and this wasn’t one of them. We wanted to know how."

"[T]he right way to talk about this — about 'ruling your world' with mind-control (and servicepeople-control) techniques — involves acknowledging structural barriers that allow some people to do this while punishing others for trying. And it involves a healthy discussion of whether we should."

"US women do not need to change their attitude; they need, first, job security, good childcare, livable wages for the work they do, and physical security."
...
"Indeed, it is extremely disturbing that for these high-powered women the 'woman problem' is no longer about social justice, equity and women's emancipation - as if these have already been achieved - but about affect, behaviour modification and well-roundedness."

"While ideas of a 'post-racial' society are but a single cute step below thinking the world was going to end on December 21 on the 'awwww, that's cute' scale, what we are in 2013 is post-'race and things typically associated with a single race existing only within that racial silo.' Finally."

"Two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, TIME Magazine ran an article titled “How to tell your friends from the Japs”, an arbitrary and insensitive guide on how to differentiate the Japanese from the Chinese. Today, just over a day after the shooting in Milwaukee that left six dead in a Sikh house of worship, Chicago’s RedEye printed a “Turban Primer”, a similarly insensitive guide on arbitrary religio-cultural distinctions between, essentially, Brown people from South East Asia and the Middle East."

'...that the media continues to disseminate this image of the scary terrorist looking to undermine Western “freedom” and “values,” who is generally portrayed as a non-white/foreign individual, follower of Islam/any other “Asian”/”Middle Eastern” religion, etc., only to further perpetuate hatred of a people and embed irrational fear into the populace. Then, when something like the shooting today happens, they throw their hands in the air and deliver the usual “How could something like this happen?” Really? Well, I have a pretty good idea…'

"To some extent, this is mainly a personal beef. I get annoyed whenever anyone slaps a label on something and then presumes that the label itself says all that needs to be said. Whenever a critic or a potential audience member sniffs about “dad rock” or “chick lit” or “one for the fanboys,” it raises my hackles. If you’d rather not engage with what a piece of art actually is—as in, what it expresses and how well it expresses it—then fine. But don’t presume some kind of superiority because of that choice. One of the biggest fallacies in the way we talk about art is this idea that somehow personal taste equates to quality: That each of us miraculously only enjoys movies and music that are the best of their respective medium, and ergo, any movies and music we don’t enjoy must be terrible."

apart from the roundup/summary of Derbyshire dreadfulness, bookmarked for especially cogent comments re being Asian-American in America (not necessarily redundant):

Michael Cho:
"So Asian-Americans, when they do have legitimate issues of racism and discrimination that face them, get reactions of, 'Its not that bad, especially if you consider what has happened to African-Americans or Latinos.' And this argument is especially prevalent in Southern California. Or, because Asian-Americans are still a growing group with no solid definition, as in we have 5th generation Asian-American as well as people who immigrated 3 months ago, America still treats us as "the other," and is dismissive of our issues.
"And the reaction for a long time was, 'Keep your head down, study hard, make money and Americans will respect you.' But there are generations of Asian-Americans, who have read Ron Takaki, Maxine Hong-Kingston, Helen Zia, Carlos Bulosan, Frank Chin, Urvashi Viad, Frank Wu, David Henry Hwang, etc. who want a voice in American politics, and want to have a more active role for Asian-Americans politically and socially. The want you to remember the internment and Vincent Chin, they want you to know how fucked up it is when NBC Sports runs headlines like 'Michelle Kwan Beaten By American Lipinski.' When those voices are raised, people don't want to hear them. There are a lot of reasons for that. But because Asian-American issues have constantly be delegitimized, or marginalized by American society, or other communities of color, we are forced to elevate these incidents which affect our community..."

willwriteforfood:
"...But then, as you pointed out so well, that attitude also renders actual complaints about discrimination or bias illegitimate. Look at all the "don't be so sensitive" comments on Gawker's own stories about Jeremy Lin, as though Asians need to wait until some "real" racial incident to call out racist attitudes, while completely ignoring all the many instances of actual violence against Asians..."